Registered Air Mail takes around between two weeks to a month to be delivered. It’s advantage is that you will get a tracking number to keep track of your item.Unregistered Air Mail is similar to registered with the only difference being you will not get a tracking number.Expedited is for those like me who are not patient enough, Delivery is made within a week.

Get Shipping Insurance for your order. It doesn’t cost that much. Your order is likely to be misplaced by the shipping guys and not Gearbest.

Use PayPal. All your purchases are covered by buyer protection. VISA and Mastercard offer similar facilities but dealing with Kenya banks is a nightmare. I discovered so many bank employees (Equity Bank) don’t know that it is possible to initiate a chargeback.

This is not the only reason to use PayPal, learnt this the hard way when a site I made a subscription to decided they aren’t accepting my request to cancel. They had the upper hand because they had my credit card details. My only option was to cancel the card and apply for another.

I have had my fair share of importing everything from Chinese Mega e-commerce sites like GearBest, Banggood, Antelife. I always pay with PayPal because of buyer protection (PayPal almost always sides with the buyer in case of disputes). These Chinese sites are very scared of people opening disputes with PayPal. But on the other hand, PayPal requires you to submit a claim directly to the seller to try to sort things out with them first. Here are a few pointers for anyone wanting to import stuff from these websites…

ALWAYS link your payment (debit or credit) card to PayPal when shopping, choose the “checkout with PayPal” option. PayPal is the only one that gets access to your credit card information and is the one that charges your card (not the seller).

Always purchase shipping insurance which is a tiny fraction of the cost of your items.

Don’t use regular air mail otherwise your order may get misplaced (probably stolen) midway. Choose registered air mail because it is much safer. Also, you usually don’t get the option to buy insurance unless you choose at least registered air mail. Buying insurance in most sites usually automatically changes your shipping method to air mail register. Most paid shipping methods (including registered air mail) get you a tracking number which you can use to get the current location and status of your package.

Choosing any post office shipping option means that your product will not be taken to your post office. It will be delivered to Posta City Square (if you’re in Nairobi) where you will pay VAT for your item at collection. Very tiny orders often don’t get charged tax and are delivered to your post office directly (usually inside an envelope).

DHL, EMS, and other expedited shipping providers pay tax for your items before you go to collect them and seek reimbursement for that tax when you collect the items at their logistics center (which you choose during item purchase). Average shipping charges for DHL, and EMS ranges between $28 and $38 depending on the number of items being shipped and warehouse location (China Mainland or Hong Kong). NOTE: Any items on Gearbest.com located in Hong Kong cannot ship to Kenya so you must find ones located in mainland China.

Most Chinese sites recently stopped aggregating different items into one order (enabling you to pay shipping, insurance, etc for the entire order). They now charge these optional costs per item which can increase your bill quite a lot. On my last order which is en route, I was disappointed to see that registered air mail fee was the same ($1.3) for a $50 item as well as a $3 item. You will feel the pinch when you buy many cheap items because registration and insurance fees often surpass the purchase price for items below $2.

One final note…
PayPal or your bank reserves the right to decline payments to any websites that have many fraud-related complaints. You can not do anything about this because they are the final gate keepers of your money.

I recently bought many items on Banggood.com (which I have used severally before without issues) but couldn’t check out for the better part of a week. PayPal was throwing me ‘card declined… contact your bank’ errors. When I went to the bank (Equity), they told me the site was blocked for fraud. Nevertheless, I went to GearBest and found the exact same items and successfully checked out. The bank reviews the status of suspicious sites from time to time, blocking and unblocking so don’t be disappointed if you can’t buy from one site. Just go to another site and chances are that you will find all your items there.

I think AliExpress is a better place for shopping, you get relatively lower prices and the merchants don’t receive payment until you confirm you’ve received the goods.
For those who want to skip paying taxes, you can try out Kenyan shipping agents in China.

For the people talking about getting charged per KG, do you know the average gross weight of a smartphone is around 300 grams? Most people doing retail shopping don’t even get close to buying a KG worth of items.